Another well-known merism appears in the third chapter. This one is spoken by Satan, the serpent.
This comes from the chapter before about the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And that tree represents all knowledge, from all the good to all the way down to all the bad. What this means is the serpent here was promising Eve that she could choose and then experience for herself anything she wanted along the whole spectrum of knowledge.
Now God was going to give her and Adam the knowledge that they needed from Him. He was the one that was going to choose what kind of knowledge that they had and that they could use. But she went around Him, took of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and she became the chooser. He would have guided them into learning the truth not mixed with anything else. But she wanted to make those decisions on her own, thinking that being in that position, she would become wise. So, God was going to limit the knowledge, but she went ahead and leapfrogged over that and took the knowledge to herself - all of it.
